We were excited to welcome MP Jane Ellison to our offices in April to tell her about the A Better Start initiative, our recent achievements and some of the exciting projects we’re planning to support Lambeth families.

With the government’s upcoming childhood obesity strategy in mind, we were keen to share our work with Public Health colleagues around diet and nutrition and in particular, LEAP’s CAN programme, which launched in January 2016 to support pregnant women with a BMI of over 25 to lead an active, healthy lifestyle.

We were joined by Eugene Oteng-Ntim from St Thomas’s Hospital, and midwives Nina Khazaeazadeh and Shelia O’Connor, who spoke about how CAN was coproduced with parents to meet the needs of local mothers and give them tools to make big and positive changes in their lives.

“CAN supports mums to feel confident to do more exercise and encourages them to look at their diets and the family's eating habits to see what could be improved” Deborah Ricketts, Health Trainer

Some of our Parent Champions were also with us on the day to speak to Jane about what works for them in regards to improving diet and nutrition for the family and how they’ve been making a real difference to the health and wellbeing of their own communities.

Diet and nutrition – more specifically, reducing child and maternal obesity in Lambeth – is one of three priority outcomes for the LEAP programme. In addition to CAN, LEAP will be offering a breastfeeding support service, working with local food outlets to encourage healthy catering, developing community-based activities to support nutrition and exercise, and improving young children’s oral health. Find out more about these projects here.

If you’d like to know more about our CAN programme, including details of how to sign up, visit our CAN page.